Picasso’s granddaughter has revealed she owns a Van Gogh—and she’s selling it at Sotheby’s

It has just been revealed that one of Pablo Picasso’s grandchildren, Marina, owns a Van Gogh—and that she is selling it at Sotheby’s in New York on 13 May. Woman in a Wood (September-October 1882) has an estimate of $600,000-$800,000.

The watercolour depicts a woman with a shawl walking by a glade near The Hague, where Van Gogh lived for nearly two years. On the reverse is a depiction of a fishing boat on the beach at the nearby coastal town of Scheveningen. Also painted in watercolour, the sketchy Boat on the Beach with Figures (September-October 1882) appears to be unfinished. The seascape is not recorded in the two Van Gogh catalogues raisonnés and we are publishing it in colour for the first time.

Marina is the daughter of Picasso’s son Paulo, from the artist’s relationship with the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, whom he had married in 1918 (they separated in 1935). On Picasso’s death in 1973, the artist’s granddaughter Marina was aged 22.

She had a fraught early life, struggling emotionally and financially. This was partly a result of Picasso’s abandonment of her grandmother and later family problems. Marina’s brother Pablito tragically died by suicide a few weeks after Picasso’s death.

Following a lengthy legal dispute after his death, Picasso’s enormous estate, including 10,000 artworks, was divided among the heirs, including Marina. After living in relative poverty, she suddenly acquired untold wealth.

Marina bought the Van Gogh in 1987, through a friend, the Swiss-based dealer Jan Krugier. The watercolour had come from a Tehran-based collector.

In Marina’s 2001 autobiography Picasso: My Grandfather, she wrote that she was often asked what her newly acquired wealth meant: “Initially I indulged myself… Finally, I was able to help children in distress halfway around the world… Now money is a tool that gives me freedom, and that’s all.”

Marina has used much of her inherited riches to support orphanages in Vietnam, where she also adopted three Vietnamese children whom she brought back to France. She has also supported charitable ventures closer to her home on the French Riviera.

In her autobiography, Marina added: “I don’t like talking about money. Perhaps because I have some. Or because I used not to have any when we lived in the shadow of a genius.”

Marina’s attitude towards Picasso was complex, but above all she resented the way her grandmother had been treated. With the women in his life, “he submitted them to his animal sexuality, tamed them, bewitched them, ingested them, crushed them on his canvas”, she wrote. Marina still bears the mental scars of what occurred nearly a century ago, and has discussed the many years she spent in therapy.

Marina never spoke out about her Van Gogh, and until a few days ago it was not publicly known that she owned the watercolour, which was presumably bought as an early “indulgence”. For someone who had been brought up in relative poverty, suddenly being able to buy a Van Gogh must have seemed like a dream. 

Another Van Gogh coming to auction

Christie’s in New York will be selling a Van Gogh landscape oil painting, also done in The Hague. In the Dunes (September 1883), estimated at $2m-$3m, is coming up for sale on 12 May, the day before Marina’s watercolour.

The seller is US businessman Jeffrey P. Draime and his wife, who bought the picture at auction in 2014 for $1.8m. From 2015 to 2023 they lent it to the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio. It is one of the last works which Van Gogh painted in The Hague, just before he left his partner Sien Hoornik and set off to paint in Drenthe, in the north of the Netherlands.

Martin Bailey is a leading Van Gogh specialist and special correspondent for The Art Newspaper. He has curated exhibitions at the Barbican Art Gallery, Compton Verney/National Gallery of Scotland and Tate Britain.

Martin has written a number of bestselling books on Van Gogh’s years in France: The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh’s Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, UK and US), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, UK and US), Starry Night: Van Gogh at the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln 2021, UK and US). The Sunflowers are Mine (2024, UK and US) and Van Gogh’s Finale (2024, UK and US) are also now available in a more compact paperback format.

His other recent books include Living with Vincent van Gogh: The Homes & Landscapes that shaped the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, UK and US), which provides an overview of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, UK and US). My Friend Van Gogh/Emile Bernard provides the first English translation of Bernard’s writings on Van Gogh (David Zwirner Books 2023, UKand US).

To contact Martin Bailey, please email [email protected]

Please note that he does not undertake authentications.

Explore all of Martin’s adventures with Van Gogh here